Flexible wall coverings, such as wallpaper and fabric, are commonly applied to walls for decorative and protective purposes. These materials are generally attached to the wall by application of a paste to the back portion of the covering material, and by sticking floor-to-ceiling length strips of the paper to the wall. Application of paste to the paper is usually accomplished by cutting the paper into strips of the desired length, placing the strips face down on the floor, paste table, or other large surface, and wiping the paste on the back of the paper with a brush or similar spreading instrument. This procedure is somewhat messy and time consuming, and also frequently results in uneven application of paste to the back of the paper. This can result in the paper having bubbles or bulges where the material has not adhered to the wall, and may even result in the paper coming loose.
Several devices have been developed for the purpose of simplyfying and expediting the application of paste to paper strips. For example, Beach, U.S. Pat. No. 2,191,225, discloses a rotating drum applicator wherein a revolving cylinder picks up paste from a well and applies it to the back of a paper which rolls over the upper portion of the cylinder. Merrifield, U.S. Pat. No. 2,717,575, shows a paste containing trough with slots on either side of the bottom through which a paper strip travels. A spring-loaded foot serves to spread the adhesive on the paper strip. Hansen, U.S. Pat. No. 3,169,080, discloses a collapsible easel-type pasting frame which provides a surface which holds the paper and permits application of the paste with a conventional paint roller.
A pasting machine similar in some respects to applicants' is disclosed in Moore, U.S. Pat. No. 3,389,680. The Moore device is a ladder mountable trough which is filled with paste and which applies the paste to the backing of the wall covering in a manner similar to the Merrifield disclosure. The paper strip travels face down along the bottom of the trough and exits the trough through a slot at one end of the trough. The paste is spread uniformly across the back of the paper by a reticulated surface on the upper portion of the slot; the paper is pressed against the reticulated surface by a biased clamp located underneath the paper strip. The reticulated surface is a fabric mesh or net formed of loosely woven filaments. Difficulties have been encountered with the use of machines having the design of the Moore patent in that the reticulated applicator surface becomes plugged and must be frequently cleaned or changed, and the uniform layer of paste on the back of the paper does not permit proper adhesion of the paper to the wall unless the wall is perfectly smooth. If the wall has usual imperfections in the surface, the amount of paste applied uniformly does not travel along the back of the paper to fill up the imperfections and thereby promote good bonding between the wall and the paper.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a paste applicator which is very simple to construct and to use, and yet which provides very rapid application of paste to wallpaper strips. It is a further object of the invention to provide a paste applicator which allows the operator to pull the paper through the apparatus at any speed he desires, and which includes means for holding the ends of each paper roll to allow a new roll to be attached when the end of a roll being pasted is reached.
It is still a further object of the invention to provide a paste applicator which applies the paste to the paper in continuous lengthwise ridges, rather than in a uniform thickness, thereby permitting proper adhesion of the paper to a wall having surface imperfections. It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a paste applicator having an applicator bar which is quickly and easily replaced.
These and other objects of the invention will become apparent to one skilled in the art through the description of the following specific embodiment of the invention.